The Devourers

by Indra Das

They sing to ward off the encroaching darkness, their words lifting with the wood sparks toward the stars. They sing, unheeding of signatures on paper, of land exchanges and politics, of the white traders and their tensions with the Nawab and the Mughal Empire.

A lycanthrope is a person who mistakenly believes they can turn into a wolf. I’m not a person, I don’t turn into a wolf, and I’m not ill. What I am has no basis in science or medicine.”

“And here where we stand, long before India, before its empires and kingdoms, there were human tribes who identified with dogs and wolves, with wild animals. And there were, and still are, tribes who are not human, who identify with humans in similar ways. Who take the shape of humans, just as humans took the shape of animals by wearing skins.”

But the human is the only creature on this planet that can manifest the demiurgic instinct, and this Zeus, I believe, was at first merely a powerful man, one who could hold sway over other humans and help them transcend their humanity.”

this is an interesting take on mythology/religion

We are the devouring, not the creative.

“If I have any god or devil it is myself, unfortunately.”

But if I’m dancing with a trickster, I’m nothing if not awed by each step, each move. He’s leading, with skill.

I don’t need to believe anything. Do you need to believe that you are a human? I simply am what I am.

love this

“It is rumored that there were tribes, and still are in some parts of the world, who have many selves. That their souls are not merely bifurcated, but multifarious things that enable them to change shapes until each of them is legion in itself.”

“I don’t know about you, Jevah-dan of France. But your second self, it is a wild and wondrous thing. And I sensed in it a purity—no, an honesty—that I have never seen before in any man or woman. I am glad to have been in its company,”

In my own way I’ve lived the lives of many humans, but I cannot know what it means to be human any more than you can truly understand what the worlds of your dreams mean.”

I see man and woman both, I see a being so human that it becomes inhuman, an animal perfection.

The language has no name, and parts of it are used by shape-shifters across the continents. It combines all the languages of humanity, cobbled from all our prey. If ever there was a tongue before Babel fell, it was this one.

“Before I forget this existence and put my second self to rest, I want to try and molt one last time. And when I do, I believe I will rise as Cyrah. Not werewolf, not rakshasa. Human, woman. And that thought, it doesn’t scare me.”

Someday isn’t today, and even shape-shifters know nothing, ultimately.

Maybe one day, among the millions, I will see Izrail, or Izrail molted into a woman I will know, somehow, as Cyrah. Or I will see nothing at all, except the flash of tusk and claw before a sudden death, before I am made one with this being I’ve shared my life with.

in those moments, I am not merely Alok. Not a second self, but a self, my self, one I’ve been afraid to let breathe for so long. One who drove my parents to remoteness. One whom Shayani couldn’t live with, breaking both our hearts. One I long to be in front of them all one day, their fear be damned.